Tomato Tart

I think you'll love this wonderful tomato tart. You can serve it warm or cold. You can certainly make your own pie dough, but store bought pie dough is fine. When I went to buy the pie dough, they were out of the pie dough you find in the refrigerated case, but they had frozen 9 inch deep dish pie shells in aluminum pans, so that's what I used for this article. I've made this before with the refrigerated pie dough in my own pie dishes. Naturally, you may have to adjust the amount of the ingredients somewhat, depending upon the size pie dish/pan you use. While this is my own recipe, I must credit certain aspects of it to Clarissa Dickson Wright, an English food author and cook, who partnered with Jennifer Paterson for the BBC produced television cooking series, "Two Fat Ladies," from the late 1990s.* 

Ingredients (approximate amounts for one 9 inch deep dish tart):

pie dough/pre-made pie shell, or your own pie dough, if you're feeling ambitious
3 large tomatoes seeded, with any tough core removed, and then cut into 1/3 to 1/2 inch slices
1 cup onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped or minced
4 tablespoons tomato sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup basil, finely chopped
1/3 cup sharp Cheddar cheese, finely chopped
1 cup heavy cream 
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup mix of pitted black and green olives
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2/3 teaspoon salt

Heat the oven to 400 F. Bake the pie shell until it begins to brown (or follow the instructions on the pie crust package), then remove it from the oven, but keep the oven hot. Meanwhile, in a skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, saute for 1 to 2 minutes, then add the garlic and cook until both the onion and garlic soften. Add the tomato sauce and stir to mix; cook until the sauce is thickened. Add the mixture to the bottom of the browned pie crust to form a base. Top the base with the tomato slices (you needn't use either end of the tomatoes). In a measuring cup, pour in 1 cup heavy cream, then add the beaten eggs, mix very well, then mix in the basil. Pour the mixture over the tomato slices in the pie shell. Add the chopped Cheddar and the olives to the top; season with salt and pepper. Bake the tart until the edges are golden brown and the custard is set (see Word History, below). Generally, the time can vary from anywhere from about 45 minutes to an hour. If you plan to serve it warm, let the tart cool a bit before slicing. If you plan to serve it cold, let it cool considerably before putting it into the refrigerator.
   

* For more about the television series, here is the link: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2016/11/two-fat-ladies-were-delight.html

Always one to give truth to the saying, "No one's perfect," when I took the tart out of the oven, I broke a small piece of the crust off. Hey, no one's perfect.

WORD HISTORY:
Custard-This word is related to "crust," a word borrowed by English from Latin. It goes back to Indo European "krus/kreus," which had the notion, "to form a crust, to begin to solidify, harden or freeze." This gave Latin "crusta" which meant, "crust, tree bark, scab, shell." This gave Old French "crouste" (crust), which produced Provençal "cro(u)stado," which meant, "a pie, a tart (food prepared with a crust as a covering)," which was taken by French as "croustade," and it was borrowed by English in the second half of the 1300s, initially as "crustade," but within a century the word had become "custard," but exactly why the spelling changed is unclear, although the change in positions of a vowel and "r," called metathesis, has happened, as in "bird," which once was "brid." Not only did the spelling change, but the meaning also changed, circa 1600; perhaps (?) from the use of boiled or baked tart fillings of milk or cream and eggs, and usually flavored and/or sweetened, the meaning it still has today.